If you were a Science Villian, the first thing you need to figure out is the escape route. So he has one.

It is not what you suspect. You see, you have to be twice as honest on the wrong side of the law (Thank you Dillon). It is about your Reputation and such. You don't damage your rep. If you are not "in their society", you would be a danger. If you were a danger, you would either be dead or too risky to contact. If they even thought you would of installed an external self distruction, he would never get another job. Yet, clients would never hire him again if anyone suspected anything wrong like that. You get exactly what you get and no suprised. And Hammer still has an escape route.

Really, his escape route is an email drop.

You see, he would never take the psychotic client. You know the ones, "Kill everyone who knows anything about this base?" kind. First, those people would never hire an outside person anyways. After all, it could leak out through the missing person. They probably would never get his name (he works through referal) and Hammer would never accept a request, if Hammer didn't know he was safe and he knew the villian/ organization. Yet, one can not be too careful.

His escape route. If you are going to see someone who might be a danger, you set the email timer. If The Hammer don't check back, the email goes out to every one of his clients. "I have been comprimised. Rescue me or defeat X (and here is the address and here is everything on the target), or I send out the location of your project. You have 72 hours."

Every villian, hero, and super agency, will respond. Now... this escape route would be spread around the Villian Community. Everyone would know it would happen. If anyone who would get his name (as a referral) and would check out, they would know about this.

So if you are an unknown quantity or seemingly dangerous, you don't get a face to face. You get remote contract, maybe if you get contact. Unless the Hammer knows you, you are never going to see him. He will design the thing and let it go. His Wrenches will build it, then leave. You pay ahead of time (only heroes and organizations get credit... they will pay off).

It is only a few beings that get Face to Face time. Most of those were villians he was hanging out with when captured.

Most of the time he is in his lair, drinking Kona coffee, designing things in his HOLO CAD system, and using his rolodex to determine supply sets, and a few lawyer contact layers creating shell companies.

"Hammer hires the party to kill a super villain who wants him dead, in exchange for helping them build their own base of operations." Dossta

"Perhaps he puts in a good-old dead-man's switch to protect himself. If he dies, various destruct mechanisms are invoked." valadaar

Good work lads, those two lines make this npc seem a bit more exciting and dynamic for game-play, Opens up a whole new can of worms.

I'm mixed on him to be honest otherwise. I love supers to death, but also enjoy playing supers with some modicum of verisimilitude and realism (yes, i know, i know), if that makes any sense. Using this guy would involve a *wink* *wink* approach to game-play. Hey guys, check it out, a "Villain's Lair Builder"

But, if tongue-in-cheek is the order of the day, then by all means, he rocks as an npc. Go to Comment

Perhaps he puts in a good-old dead-man's switch to protect himself. If he dies, various destruct mechanisms are invoked.

Plots could write themselves easily around this point - perhaps an anti-hero, learning of this 'feature' chooses to invoke it by popping off Mr. Hammer. While this would have the effect of destroying multiple villain headquarters, the fact that some are located in populated areas - and could be construed as military provocations that could cause war - means that this would have to be stopped.

This really struck me as neat, one of those unexpected "so that's how it all works" subs that fills a missing niche in the over all world mechanics of a supers game without requiring a lot of fantastical hand waving or pointedly ignoring how there can be so many secret bases across the world (often in remote areas) in supers games.

Very useful, and nice job on it being flexible enough to fit into sci-fi and cyberpunk settings with minimal modifications. (One could adapt this to fantasy as well easily enough, especially with how many evil; warlords have dungeons and great keeps in remote parts of the lands.) Go to Comment

I like him. But I must wonder -- why isn't he dead yet? Isn't that the first rule of any seriously evil villain, "kill everyone who knows the secrets of my secret base"? I would either give him some serious defenses, or make it into a plotline. Hammer hires the party to kill a super villain who wants him dead, in exchange for helping them build their own base of operations. Go to Comment

Cool idea! Someone has to build all those lairs. The downside is that my heroes would just hunt down and beat the Hammer until he gave them the location, layout, and defenses of the villain's lair. Either that or they would just "borrow" one of those Thunder class diggers and just plow into the enemy's base.

Another fun idea: I could see the Hammer having escape vehicles on every block in town. You see him in public and he jumps into a phone booth that blasts off into the sky or the sidewalk drops out from under him and slides back into place without him there.

One last fun idea is that the Hammer died years ago and his empire is perpetuated by his drones. You think you're hiring the Hammer, but you never actually meet him. Only when you find the Hammer's true lair and find his corpse resting gracefully upon a throne in his command center do you realize that he had been dead all along. Go to Comment

Well it is a good piece taken from Urban Fantasy or a modern fantasy. Good folklore taken by a modern approach. It would be a horror thing, in a world where "magic", "demons", and "elder beings" are not accepted as "real".

And the extra bits at the bottom are those educational or explanatory bits I always like to add. Without them, there are unanswered questions. Add the bits and you don't have to add the questions.

The reason for the 3 approaches is classic GMing. The first, gives you various options as it fits your campaign. If you play it somewhere in the middle, you can go with any option until the last moment. (Go with what your players believe, unless you are playing the red herring card.) The second, should your players get ahold of your write up, they still don't quite know which way it will go. Go to Comment

My original throughts for the Riot Dog was for an Urban Fantasy setting, useful for a number of spots. However, I mixed to straighter fantasy as that is more palitable and useful to most members. Go to Comment

I like the note at the bottom. With the three uses in your campaign, this one almost seems like something from Tales of Terror. Altogether, it sounds useful and interesting. I could see using it as a way to get the characters into an adventure, or even becoming the adventure itself. Go to Comment

I like this idea - and how it is not too terribly tied to specific locale. Anywhere where riots could happen are appropriate. There could even be a technobabble reason for such a creature to be in a modern/magic free world ("Stress pheramones").